from the let's-go-to-the-video-tape dept

Since we began the awesome stuff series of posts about cool crowdfunded projects to check out each week, they've mostly focused on cool physical objects. However, obviously, we talk a lot about music and musicians doing cool things online, and it just so happens that three different musicians that we've written about many times in the past all popped up associated with new Kickstarter projects this week -- though, amazingly, only one of the three projects involves an album. Let's dive in.

Hopefully you are well aware of Jonathan Coulton, internet sensation and all around nice guy musician. We've written about him many, many times in the past, as an example of a musician who really embraced the internet and his fanbase, connected with them in a really genuine way and has built up a hugely successful career as a professional musician while ignoring all of the traditional routes to music stardom. Now, he's teamed up with famed comic book artist Greg Pak to do do a graphic novel based on characters from various Coulton songs. Plus, Coulton is writing a new song for the book as well. My favorite part about this is how this collaboration came to be. You can trace it back to a single tweet:

And people say the internet isn't awesome? The illustrations are also being done by another top comic book artist, Takeshi Miyazawa, so it's basically just a whole bunch of awesome folks coming together, via Twitter, to do something cool that should exist.

Given who is involved, it should be no surprise that it quickly shot past its target threshold, and Pak has already said that due to the overwhelming response, the book is going to be even longer than originally planned.

Last summer, we wrote about the band Secret Cities, when one of its members talked about how wonderful he thinks it is when he finds out someone downloaded his music, even if it wasn't an authorized copy -- because he knows that obscurity is a bigger threat than piracy, and you'll never get fans who like you if you can't get them to hear your music first. The band has never lived together in the same city, and has always recorded in the past on their own computers, sending the various bits and pieces between each other wherever they were at the time. However, for their next album, they want to try going into a studio, and recording it the old fashioned way -- so they've booked a great studio in San Francisco, and are using Kickstarter to (hopefully) raise the cash to pay for the studio time.

They're about halfway to their goal with 15 days to go, which usually means the project will get funded, but it's no guarantee. So you can kick in and help make their dream a reality. The band's got nearly two dozen songs ready to go, and just watch the video above to see how giddy they are about this project.

Finally, we've got an interesting project from Ondi Timoner, a documentary filmmaker, who is working on a really ambitious project called a Total Disruption telling a variety of stories about innovators of all kind. While most of the stories involve talking to various great entrepreneurs (including some of our favorite entrepreneurs out there: Alexis Ohanian of Reddit, Tony Hsieh from Zappos, Reid Hoffman from Linkedin and Bram Cohen from BitTorrent), Timoner recently decided to do a whole series on Amanda Palmer, as she goes around performing the house concerts from her mega-successful Kickstarter campaign.

It's important to note that this is not about creating another 1.5 hour "documentary" with all of these folks, but building an information service / portal that contains as many stories as possible of innovators and the innovation they're working on. This is a sorely needed visual and audio history of some of the most interesting innovations of this era. This project is about 60% funded, with 24 days to go, which is a good sign, but the dollar amount is pretty high, so it may still be a challenge. We love really ambitious projects, and this seems like a great one to check out and support if you agree.

from the why-not-just-give-credit? dept

The Jonathan Coulton / Glee dispute has been getting a fair bit of attention lately, but it appears that Glee runs into this sort of issue quite frequently. Just a few weeks before all of this happened with Coulton, there was an article in Theater Mania about a choreographer pissed off that Fox refused to credit him for using his dance moves in a Glee rendition of "Let's Have a Kiki," by The Scissor Sisters. The song and the choreography (which was done by Brad Landers for free, without a contract, but with a promise to pay later if any money was ever made) became something of a minor viral hit last year, with a bunch of YouTube videos of people doing the same moves.

You can see the original below:

And... the Glee version, starring Sarah Jessica Parker:

It's pretty clearly a copy. Is there a legal claim there? Well... maybe. Choreography is copyrightable, and we've seen some lawsuits happen, but Landers was somewhat limited in what he could do because of the lack of a full contract and since he didn't register the copyright. In fact, despite Landers' complaints, one could argue pretty persuasively that he was made much better off by this situation. Thanks to the song appearing in Glee, that handshake deal finally paid off in terms of cash:

The Scissor Sisters, after receiving a sizable sum from Fox and Spirit Music for the rights to their song, paid Landers just as they had promised during that handshake.

What's interesting is that what upset Landers (and Coulton) was something that actually had little to do with copyright at all. Both were most perturbed by the lack of credit from Fox:

From the moment Landers saw the Tweet about "Kiki" on Glee, he has pursued one thing: credit.... Since, Landers has only pursued two things from Glee: confirmation that his choreography was being used in the November 29th episode, and some kind of documentation that stated his work was his work.

All of this raises a big question: why are Fox and Glee so averse to giving credit? It's been discussed many times before that credit or attribution is often much more important to artists than copyright itself. In fact, a recent study showed very strong evidence that credit has significant value to artists, often outweighing the value of any copyright claim.

So why doesn't Fox provide such credit?

It's free to do so. It basically costs them nothing, other than to add the names to the flashing credits at the end that nobody reads, or (better yet) in online notes to the show, which perhaps people will read. I've never understood why people are stingy with credit in such situations. Some suspect that (ironically) it may be copyright law itself that makes companies stingy with credit, since it opens up at least the potential of further legal ramifications. For example, if it's later found that a use is infringing, they can make a stronger argument that its "willful," potentially tripling any damages award. In other cases, it may just be general stinginess, and a feeling that the original creators don't deserve the credit, or that the people on the show would greedily prefer that they get the credit for such "creative" interpretations.

In the end, though, it seems like it would be a nice and neighborly thing to do to provide credit where possible, even if not legally required, and even if Fox wants to claim fair use. It would seem likely that such a simple free move would actually lead to much greater appreciation and support, rather than anger towards the show and its producers.

from the how-messed-up-is-our-system dept

Want to know just how messed up our copyright system is, and just how out of sync it is with the way people feel about copyright and what makes sense? Just know this: between Jonathan Coulton and Fox, concerning the dispute over Fox's Gleeusing Coulton's rendition of Baby Got Back on their show -- you could make an argument that Coulton may have actually exposed himself to more copyright infringement problems than Fox did.

Allow me to explain. When the whole thing first broke, we thought that Coulton took the right approach in basically just telling his fans about it. Then, when we heard that he was exploring legal issues with his lawyers, that actually seemed like the wrong approach to take, even if he was upset about things. According to various reports, right before the show aired, Fox finally reached out to him and explained that what they did was perfectly legal (probably true) and that Coulton should be happy for the exposure. Coulton's response was quite reasonable -- asking if that meant Fox would be crediting him. Since the answer was no, the promise of exposure rings a bit hollow.

That said, it's not entirely hollow -- because of Coulton's ability to whip up (completely reasonable) righteous indignation about this from his fans via social media. As he told Mashable in the link above:

"They were right. I did get exposure, but it didn't come from anything they did. It was sympathetic outrage on Twitter, and bloggers and journalists talking about how crazy it was."

[....] "Sometimes I forget that Twitter is something beyond just being snarky at the Oscars. All of a sudden something happens and you remember that this is an amazing, powerful tool." Coulton says. "My fans have a keen sense of justice, and this idea that we should be attributed for our work. People who are of the Internet realize that attribution is what we trade on."

And, of course, he's taken it a step further as well, re-releasing his original song on iTunes, but calling itBaby Got Back (In the Style of Glee) and promising to donate the proceeds to two charities associated with Glee: The VH1 Save the Music Foundation and the It Gets Better Project. Song sales are doing well, with Coulton's version climbing the charts, while the official Glee version of the song is riddled with one star reviews from his supportive fans (even though he's not encouraging people to do this) and is nowhere to be found on the charts.

Still, what strikes me as perhaps most interesting about all of this is that as you explore the legal issues, it is entirely possible to come out with an argument that says that if anyone is infringing on copyright here... it's Jonathan Coulton. Let me be clear on this: I am not saying that anyone has directly accused him of this, nor am I suggesting (in any way) that he should be accused of this. I'm just showing how misaligned the law is with what most people think of as a sensible regime today. So why might Coulton be in trouble? As he's noted repeatedly, he paid the compulsory license to cover the song via the Harry Fox Agency. Doing so means that he agreed (pdf) to abide by Section 115 of the Copyright Act.

A compulsory license includes the privilege of making a musical arrangement of the work to the extent necessary to conform it to the style or manner of interpretation of the performance involved, but the arrangement shall not change the basic melody or fundamental character of the work, and shall not be subject to protection as a derivative work under this title, except with the express consent of the copyright owner.

Previously, we and many others had suggested that the changes that what Coulton had made could possibly be protected as unique creative works. However, he more or less gave up that claim when he used the statutory license, rather than doing a direct deal with Sir Mix A Lot, or whoever else holds the rights on the song. That also means, however, that Coulton did not live up to Section 115 and his cover, in all likelihood, violates the original copyrights, because the license he got does not cover the very different arrangement and melody he created.

That is, by any normal measure, insane. But that's the law. This whole situation has (ridiculously) exposed Jonathan Coulton as a "pirate" and Fox as being perfectly within the law. And that just seems silly.

from the social-mores dept

We've talked about Jonathan Coulton and his embrace of the internet and new business models plenty on Techdirt -- as well as his nuanced arguments concerning copyright infringement. He's not "pro-piracy," but recognizes that the overall growth of the internet that has resulted in more infringement has also created tremendously valuable tools and services that made his music career possible. Thus, recognizing that the two things go hand in hand, he notes that it's better in the long run. So what does he do when someone infringes on his rights? Well, he goes public.

And then there's the Glee version, which is quite similar, and includes a few of Coulton's own additions:

Yes, his is a cover song, but he introduced some variations that appear to be directly copied in Glee. Is there a potential copyright claim here? Well, that depends -- and the copyright law here is complex. You can cover a song by paying compulsory license fees, and Fox likely did that to whoever holds the copyright on the original. But they copied specific changes (and possibly the music) that Coulton added, which could potentially be covered by his own copyright (of course, whether or not he registered them could also impact what he could do about it). And let's not even get into the issue of things like sync licenses for video, and the (still open) question of whether or not Glee actually used part of Coulton's own recording.

In the end, though, almost none of that probably matters. Because Coulton seems unlikely (we hope) to go legal here. Instead, he's just going with the public shame route -- with a simple tweet about the situation, which has set off "the internet" to help him make his case and embarrass Fox and Glee.

Internet sleuths immediately went to work on the question, creating side-by-side comparisons of the audio (which are very convincing) and even unearthing an official Fox version of the as-yet-unreleased single in the Swedish iTunes store. While the track is not currently available in the American store, gaming blog Kotaku claims that it “was available earlier and was pulled by Fox.” Despite calls from Twitter and multiple media organizations, the network has yet to make a statement as of this afternoon, but, all things considered, it’s looking pretty bad for Glee.

Of course, as a public storm of support rises behind Coulton, it seems likely that Fox/Glee producers will step up, apologize and probably cut Coulton a check of some sort. All of that seems a lot more efficient -- and it didn't require copyright law at all. Just a bit of public shaming for a bad actor. Of course, just imagine if the situation had been reversed, and Coulton was caught making use of a News Corp.-owned song. In that case, you'd have to imagine that the cease and desist letters and lawyers would have popped up quite quickly....

from the a-growing-trend dept

It would appear that crowdsourcing concerts is suddenly becoming quite popular. Just as we wrote about Andrew Bird crowdsourcing his new South American tour via Songkick, someone points out that Jonathan Coulton (who has experimented with crowdsourcing shows in the past using Eventful), just announced a similar effort via a new ticketing site called BringTheGig. BringTheGig has a slightly different feature set, which is also interesting. The first group of people to pledge to bring a concert to the area (providing enough support to make the show happen) can actually then get their money back if the show itself turns out to be really big. So, this gives incentives for fans to sign up early and to tell all their friends about it.

Here’s how it works. There are 40 funder slots available – basically 40 tickets that go on sale in advance of the rest of them. After two weeks (or sooner), these slots will theoretically be filled, and the rest of the tickets will go on sale. If you are one of these first 40 people, you get your money back if we get more than 160 people to come to the show.

It’s a pretty cool idea I think: get a core of fans to cover what you need to make the show happen, and then incentivize those to spread the word

There are other similar sites, like GigFunder, and Eventful's "Demand It!" feature is still around as well. Songkick's Detour platform also has similar incentives, but through a very different mechanism. Given all this activity, I'm hopeful that we'll start seeing more innovative ways to make live shows more efficient and effective, while also creating new ways for artists to connect with fans and to help fans spread the word about their favorite artists. It seems like a real opportunity that is only just now being explored more deeply.

from the rocking-in-the-free-world dept

We've written a few times about the rather awesome The Humble Indie Bundle folks who have built a business out of bundling up a few (independently produced) video games, and offering them in a simple to buy pay-what-you-want format, with certain incentives to get people to pay more. Each bundle has been more successful than the last. Today, the Humble Bundle folks are trying something new: music. Launching today, they're doing a similar offering, but rather than video games, it's music by They Might Be Giants, Jonathan Coulton, MC Frontalot, Hitoshi Sakimoto and Christopher Tin. And, if you pay more than the average price, you also get music from Ok Go. And, as always, there are options on how to allocate the funds you spend, including options to designate a portion to go to various charities.

I'll be interested to see how well this does, but they sure chose an amazing group of musicians who are really well known to the geek/gaming crowd. We've written about or mentioned Jonathan Coulton, OK Go, MC Frontalot and TMBG before. Christopher Tin and Hitoshi Sakimoto are well known for their work in video games as well. It certainly seems like a really well-suited bundle.

The bigger point, though, is seeing how the Humble Bundle is expanding its model to see how it works in other fields. If I were running an "affinity label" of some sort, where you have a bunch of different groups that attract a similar audience, I'd be watching pretty closely to see how this works out, because there's no reason you couldn't do something similar with a select group of artists.

from the it's-dead,-jim dept

So we recently had a bit of a debunking of writer Ewan Morrison's nearly 100% factually incorrect discussion of what the failure of ACTA in Europe means. Morrison made a few responses on his Twitter feed -- bizarrely claiming (for example) that I'm wrong about the DMCA and that it wasn't celebrated by the entertainment industry and decried by the tech industry. There's no way to respond to that other than to laugh. It's not hard to find historical accounts that show techies were protesting against the DMCA and trying to fight it in court. Morrison is flat out wrong on this one.

But what's more, is that he goes on to raise a very common trope we've heard from copyright maximalists: claiming that this is all about people not wanting to support artists they like, and that this is because they're jealous of artists. As Ewan stated in a series of tweets:

What amazes me is the vehemence towards the idea that there might be people who make a living out of their art.

A lot has to be said for the theory that this is based on jealousy and resentment. Do consumers actually despise artists?

While, perhaps, there are some people who are jealous of artists, it's hard to see any truth to those claims on a widespread basis. In fact, as we've detailed over the years, fans seem to be absolutely ecstatic when they find out that artists they really love are successful. Let's take two recent examples. First up, Louis CK and his direct to fan offering that involved him being really cool to his fans and connecting with them -- and then asking them, politely, to pay for his video special (which was inexpensive and had no DRM). And it worked. Less than two weeks later and he'd made $1 million... and his fans loved it. They weren't jealous. They didn't have any resentment towards him making a living (and a super comfortable one at that). They were thrilled.

Next up. Amanda Palmer and her Kickstarter campaign. She sought to raise $100,000 for her latest album release... and ended up with $1.2 million. And once again, her fans were thrilled about how much money she made. There wasn't jealousy or resentment. Instead, they celebrated both online and off (there was a big party in Brooklyn, and it appears that party is continuing over into her current tour).

Over and over and over again we see the same pattern. Fans don't resent artists they love making money. In fact, they quite often are so invested in the success of those artists, that they get vicarious joy from the success of those artists. I've seen no evidence that true fans are jealous of artists or that fans get upset at the idea of artists making a living. Quite the opposite. They seem to celebrate such success stories, because it's really awesome.

So where's the disconnect? If you start going through folks like the ones listed above, and how they relate to their fans, you find a pretty common pattern. These are artists that really truly connect with their fans. As Amanda Palmer told us, you have to build an army of supporters, day by day, connecting one by one. This is hard work. But go through the list above and look at some of the things they do to reach out to fans and connect with them. Look at the levels they go to in order to be truly open, human and awesome for their fans.

And you begin to see the pattern.

The artists who truly connect... their fans support them as far as they possibly can. There's no jealousy about their success. There's no one who wants to somehow deny them a living. It's the exact opposite.

The problem, then, is that for some artists who fail at this, it's difficult for them to understand why. They think their content is good. They think they're nice to their fans. And maybe they're right. But, for whatever reason (and sometimes it's just something that's in the air), that connection didn't stick. People don't support them. It's not because they are jealous. It's not because they want to deny them a living. In many ways, it's worse and much harder for those artists to come to grips with: it's because people just don't care that much about the artist. Not because of "piracy." Not because of some moral failings. The artist just failed to "build an army." Sometimes it's because the artist just isn't that good. Sometimes it's because the artist doesn't treat fans right (and "blaming" fans or calling them "criminals" or calling them "unethical" and wrapping stuff up with DRM is a pretty good way to not treat fans right). Yes, in some cases, the failure can be self-induced, but it seems in those cases we see the most vocal lashing out by the artists who simply refuse to do any sort of self-reflection.

So, can we finally dispense with this myth that the great masses out there don't want to support artists? Or that they're jealous of their success? If that was the case, we wouldn't see the examples we see above. We wouldn't see people exclaiming all over Twitter how much they love people like Louis CK and Amanda Palmer, and how freaking thrilled they are when they see the stories of the massive success of their fan-friendly approaches. But we do see that with those artists and many more, because they learned the secret: connect at a really deep level with fans, and those fans won't be jealous. They'll support you wherever you want to go. Happily. And they will shout it from the mountains for others to hear. Treat your fans right, and they give it right back to you.

from the well-needed dept

I know we've written a few times now about David Lowery's now infamous shaming of an intern because she apparently doesn't give him enough of her money, but that story keeps getting attention. Thankfully, a lot of that attention comes in the form of people from all over the music business popping up to explain (1) how Lowery's factual claims are false , (2) his ethical claims are silly and (3) it's time to get with the future, rather than pine for a mythical past that never existed. Here's a collection of some of the more interesting such posts.

First up, we have Jeff Price from Tunecore -- the company that helps thousands of artists release and sell music. Jeff has more data on how artists make money than probably anyone else alive. And he says that nearly all of Lowery's factual claims are wrong, or at best, misleading. Here's a snippet, but the whole thing is worth reading:

Well here’s some truth about the old industry that David somehow misses.

Previously, artists were not rolling in money. Most were not allowed into the system by the gatekeepers. Of those that were allowed on the major labels, over 98% of them failed. Yes, 98% .

Of the 2% that succeeded, less than a half percent of those ever got paid a band royalty from the sale of recorded music.

How in the world is an artist making at least something, no matter how small, worse than 99% of the world’s unsigned artists making nothing and of the 1% signed, less than a half a percent of them ever making a single band royalty ever?

Finally, as much as I hate to say it, being an artist does not entitle the artist to get money. They have to earn it. And not everyone can.

This is a point that Lowery and his friends always ignore: because they don't count all the bands that failed under the old system. Those artists don't matter to them. The fact that those guys can make some money today where they made $0 before means nothing to them. The only artists who count are the artists who used to make lots of money, but don't make much money any more. Another example of Lowery being wrong that Price responds to is the claim that recorded music revenue to artists has been going down. Price has data:

This is empirically false. Revenue to labels has collapsed. Revenue to artists has gone up with more artists making more money now than at any time in history, off of the sale of pre-recorded music.

Taken a step further, a $17.98 list price CD earned a band $1.40 as a band royalty that they only got if they were recouped (over 99% of bands never recouped).

If an artist sells just two songs for $0.99 on iTunes via TuneCore, they gross $1.40.

If they sell an album for $9.99 on iTunes via TuneCore, they gross $7.00.

This is an INCREASE of over 700% in revenue to artists for recorded music sales.

Yeah, but you have to actually work at it now. Go read Jeff's entire writeup. It's pretty damning for Lowery.

Next up, we've got famed musician/producer Steve Albini's response, in which he notes that Lowery's facts are wrong and he's pining for a past that doesn't exist and ignoring all sorts of new opportunities:

In addition to vastly overstating the generosity of record labels toward artists in the old paradigm, Lowery openly sneers at the booming avenues for income that define the new music industry, merchandising and live performance.

As is true every time an industry changes, the people who used to have it easy claim the new way is not just hard for them but fundamentally wrong. The reluctance to adapt is a kind of embarrassing nostalgia that glosses over the many sins of the old ways, and it argues for a kind of pity fuck from the market.

It's doomed thinking. When it became obvious that the studio recording industry was not going to remain an analog domain, we built Electrical Audio to be as self-sufficient as possible so we could continue to use those methods we thought had important advantages despite changes in the greater industry. We didn't whine at the moon and expect the rest of the industry to indulge us. We also bought a Pro Tools rig to accommodate the sessions that weren't going to be done in the analog domain regardless.

Adapt to conditions or quit. Bitching is for bitches.

Next up, we've got successful "internet-era" musician Jonathan Coulton, who Lowery and his friends are claiming wrote a post supporting them. But that's only if you read the beginning, where Coulton claims that he agrees with Lowery. If you actually read the whole thing, Coulton's point is much more clear. He agrees that artists should get compensated, but scolding your customers is no way to do it. In fact, he talks about how exciting the future is going to be where more and more stuff is available for download for free, and how that will shake up lots of industries, beyond just music -- and just how exciting that is:

This is my bias: the decline of scarcity seems inevitable to me. I have no doubt that this fight over mp3s is just the first of many fights we're going to have about this stuff. Our laws and ethics already fail to match up with our behaviors, and for my money, those are the things we should be trying to fix. The change is already happening to us, and it's a change that WE ARE CHOOSING. It's too late to stop it, because we actually kind of like a lot of the things that we're getting out of it.

My one quibble with Coulton is that he seems to accept it as fact that artists make less money these days. His own experience and number from folks like Jeff Price above show that's simply not true. It may be true that the small circle of folks, like Lowery, who had some success in the past under the old system, and who then fail to adapt, may make less money, but that's the nature of a competitive marketplace.

Former record label guy Ethan Kaplan, whose insights we've discussed before, also weighed in with a more philosophical take, which is worth reading too. He makes two key points. As a guy who ran technology for Warner Music, he certainly has first hand knowledge about the role of innovation in the music business, and according to him, innovation was seen as a problem, because it broke the gatekeeper basis on which the old labels were built:

Innovation was antithetical to value for content, as it diminished the use of accessibility to increase relative worth.

Get that? He's pointing out that the labels' entire model was built on them being the gatekeeper -- limiting accessibility, in order to artificially suppress supply to keep prices high. The problem with innovation is that it inevitably moves towards greater efficiency. And that means pulling down artificial barriers. In the end, that's what Lowery is really complaining about, even if he doesn't realize it. He and his friends who once had some success as musicians face a more difficult world not because of unethical kids or because of technology... but because the way they used to make money was based on an artificial barrier that limited supply and competition, and allowed them to artificially inflate prices. It was good for them, but sucked for everyone who was kept out of the market. Why do you think this same crew is now arguing for a "new elitism" and directly insulting artists who succeed through more open means? It's because they want to go back to a limited supply. That's not happening.

And that brings up Ethan's second key point. There is no right to make money:

It is not a musician’s god given right to make money from their art. No one ever said this would continue as is.

This is a hard lesson. It doesn’t mean that copyright isn’t important. It doesn’t mean that artists can’t make money. It just means that it’s not a given, nor is it the responsibility of others to make this possible.

No one has ever had a "right" to make money from what they create. They have a right to try to do so. And many people have figured out how to do so under the current system. Those complaining don't seem to understand that you don't just get to sit back and have people give you money. You have to work at it, every day. That's the lesson Amanda Palmer provided everyone with her massively successful fundraising. She didn't raise that money based on any "ethical" arguments or anything having to do with copyright at all. In fact, she's explained how infringement has always helped her. She's able to do that because she works hard every single day to not just create great music, but to connect with her fans at a very deep level. She doesn't scold her fans -- she celebrates them. And because of that, she can make a ton of money and her fans love her for it.

Finally, we've got musician Travis Morrison, who was in a decently successful band (Dismemberment Plan) for a while and now works for the Huffington Post. He points out that this argument that there's some sort of ethical issue with the "kids these days" ignores the fact that past generations got music for free too, and for him, it was a huge boost to both his fandom and his desire to become a musician:

Music is so important to people. It is majorly important to young people. And to me? Literally somewhere below water and air but above food. And I just went for it. I bought a lot of music; I got a lot of free music from whatever sources were at hand; I just had to have it by any means necessary. If you duped a copy of a Dismemberment Plan record in college or something, it's cool. I guess I'd like to have the money, but you know what, I hope you just listened to it with even 1/10 of the consciousness I gave to the music I listened to as a kid--copied, stolen, or bought. And you know, maybe take some of the sermonizing from my peer group with a grain of salt. I think some of them did some of the things I did. Or... maybe a lot of them.

He's basically reinforcing the original point that Emily made and which kicked this whole thing off. Access to music and compensation of artists are two separate issues. The fact is that people know that the technology today enables access to pretty much every piece of music around. And it's a shame that we try to suppress that. The issue of compensation is somewhat separate from that -- and plenty of smart musicians are figuring it out. But arguing that access automatically means you need to compensate musicians at a high level (remember, Spotify's no good according to this bunch) or it's "unethical" just doesn't make sense, and has never made sense.

This debate has been interesting, but I'm glad to see that tons of people who live directly in that world have been coming out to correct the many inaccuracies in Lowery's post, which a few too many people took as gospel without understanding the details.

from the does-anyone-take-these-people-seriously? dept

One of the more annoying things about debates on copyright law, is that when we talk about alternative business models that do not rely on copyright, some people feel the need to insist that this means making less money -- or, even, making no money at all. There is just this assumption that an alternative business model means something along the lines of "give it away and pray," when nothing could be further from the truth. Yet this kind of thinking is so ingrained, that even in stories of artists making a ton of money, some maximalists simply assume that they're not making any money. We saw this recently in the comments to one of our recent posts about Jonathan Coulton which talks about how he made $500k last year -- at which point, someone said that such examples are useless since no one will pay.

It appears that Paramount's "Worldwide VP of Content Protection and Outreach" Al Perry also fits into the same unthinking mode. We've already discussed Perry's recent talk to Brooklyn Law School, but there was one section that caught my eye and deserves a separate post. It comes right at the beginning:

Perry opened by noting that one has to articulate a problem before seeking to solve it, and he refers to the problem as “content theft.” He pointed out that copyright law gives creators the right to monetize their creations, and that even if people like Louis C.K. decide not to do so, that’s a choice and not a requirement.

Now that seems bizarre and totally unsupportable. Remember, Louis CK made over $1 million in just a few days -- an amount that he admits was much higher than what he would have received just for a straight up performance. In what world does going direct-to-fans, building a good relationship, automatically mean no money made at all? Not the one we're based on.

from the good-point dept

We've written plenty about Jonathan Coulton over the years, including two recent stories. The first was his revelation that he grossed about half a million dollars last year -- even with his music being offered under a Creative Commons license such that you could share it. He made a lot of his money because people still pay him for the music just to support him, and also from touring. We also wrote about his thoughtful discussion over what the shutting down of Megaupload meant.

Last month he went on Jerry Brito's Surprisingly Free podcast where he talked more about both of those things, as well as his general thoughts on his career and related issues. Where it got especially interesting was a bit further into the discussion, where he admits that he certainly still has an emotional reaction to finding out someone downloaded his music without paying for it, which makes his relationship with copyright more "complicated." However, he then talks about how important the internet is to him, and how in the long run, if it comes down to the internet or copyright law, he's got to side with the internet:

... where you fall on this issue, a lot of the time, comes down to how much you value things like a "free and open internet." And, for me... if, as a consequence of nurturing this amazing thing, called the internet... if as a consequence of letting that do what it wants, we destroy a number of industries, including the record business, and maybe even including the rock star business, I think that humanity will be better off. I, for one, think that the internet is one of the greatest human achievements, ever. It's an amazing tool and we have only just begun to explore the possibilities. To me, it feels like it's a part of our evolution as a species. I value it as much as I value the Bill of Rights....

He later says (as we've talked about over and over again) that there are all sorts of ways to compete with infringement -- and offering all works at a reasonable price in the formats people want, is a really, really good way to compete and get people to actually buy.

Towards the end, he also points out that the research still hasn't really shown that piracy has harmed artists:

You need to reassess whether or not piracy is actually a problem. A lot of people assume it is... and they could be right. But I don't think we've really determined the answer to that question. And I don't think we can make smart policy decisions until we know the answer to that question. If, in fact, there is some small harm or no harm, then we need to look and see: what do we want to do with this society? Is it better for us to have some small amount of piracy, in exchange for all the other goodies we're going to get if we stop spending so much time and effort trying to squash things.... We make decisions all the time about what we think is morally right and wrong, and more and more people are making decisions that are out of step with the laws. And that's an interesting phenomenon, and we haven't really unraveled what it means yet.

Again, this isn't some "freeloader" as critics often like to label all sorts of folks who make these kinds of arguments. This is a very successful professional musician, whose success hasn't come from the traditional gatekeepers, but from embracing the internet and what it allows, and developing new business models.